Fourth annual TEDxNashville sells out at TPAC

Loosely tied together under the theme of “Next,” speakers at the 2013 TEDxNashville conference delighted a sold-out audience with presentations and performances touching on topics as disparate as charter schools, the importance of focus and NASA’s next space shuttle program.

This was the fourth year of Nashville’s iteration of TEDx, the independently organized events based on the popular TED conferences, which are dedicated to “ideas worth spreading.”

TED (which stands for technology, entertainment and design) has expanded to include a broader spectrum of topics over the years, and the variety was on display on Saturday at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

More than a dozen speakers and performers were each given 18 minutes before the audience, which heard talks including: why the Underground Railroad was one of the most innovative networks in U.S. history: how social media is endangering a group of primates; and how microchips could be used to simulate organs and to improve drug discovery and testing.

One of the biggest highlights of the day came when Todd May, manager of NASA’s Space Launch System Program office, unveiled the agency’s latest space shuttle prototype.

May said the ship, which will launch in 2017 from Kennedy Space Center, could have the ability to take humans to Mars, and even to asteroids, introducing the capability for “planetary defense.”

“Weapons of mass destruction exist, and they exist in space, ” May deadpanned. “If we don’t do something about it, the asteroids have already won.”

Videos of the talks will be posted online in a month. Past videos of TEDxNashville talks can be seen here.

To view a complete list of the speakers and presentations from Saturday, visit the TEDxNashville site.

Attendees, of course, were quite active on Twitter throughout the event.